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Ninja Scroll Gets A Writer

Alex Tse signs up for smackdown

Watchmen co-screenwriter Alex Tse has signed up to adapt Ninja Scroll, one of the most popular animes in the world, into a live-action feature film for Warner Bros and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company.

The story of the original 1993 film, directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri ,sees a vagabond ninja called Jubei attempting to slay the "Eight Devils Of Kimon" who threaten the entire land of Japan. But because nothing's ever that easy, it transpires that the devils have some seriously worrisome abilities, like a man with stone skin, a blind assassin, a woman whose snake tattoos come to life and a hunchback whose hunch is a wasp's nest.

It's also extremely violent and contains a rape scene that initially saw it receiving cuts in the UK and being released Unrated in the US, so we're guessing that that will be calmed down a little in live action. Also, that - being as it's originally Japanese anime and therefore has only a loose relationship to 'making sense' - Tse might try to logic up the plot a tiny bit.

Don't get too excited about this just yet though - it's very early days, with no director attached, and Tse is also hard at work on a new version of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man and an adaptation of novel The Winter of Frankie Machine for Michael Mann. Still, if it happens at least it might erase the memory of those bad guys in Elektra who paid such close homage to the film.